


A Sound of Wolves

by elithewho



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fic Exchange, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-03
Updated: 2011-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-22 04:08:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elithewho/pseuds/elithewho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man and a woman cross paths in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sound of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sir Wiggleybotham](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sir+Wiggleybotham).



> Written before ADWD. Written for the asoiaf kink exchange at robellion.

A woman might have many motives to change her face. There are a hundred secret reasons to hide, to deceive and to sneak around unseen. A woman is never known to wear the same face twice and if she once wore the same face every moment of her life, she has long forgotten what it was. A woman has no need to remember it.

Still, a woman never goes north and she never allows herself to listen to the wolves howling in the dark of night. There's something in that sound that confuses her. The innkeeper or the farmhand or the nobleman who she is deceiving will glance her way and think for a moment that the old crone or the doughy whore or the young courtesan has changed shape, that the hair is suddenly dark and limp, that the face is long and the eyes dark grey. A woman catches herself at the last moment. She tries hard not to listen to the wolves.

A woman grows tired.

Then there comes a time when a woman forgets herself. It happens in a ramshackle village in The Neck, as far north as she allows herself to go. She carries buckets of milk on her strong, strapping shoulders and she sees something out of the corner of her eye. A someone. A man.

A man with no particularly distinctive features simply walking down the overgrown path. She knows him at once. She has never seen his face before in her life, but she knows this man and she forgets herself. The heavy milk buckets sag on sharp, skinny shoulders, as thin, bony legs buckle under the weight. The buckets make a terrible crash as they split open on the dirt, milk spilling everywhere, soaking into the mud.

A woman barely notices. She has a smile on her face when he sees her, striding over to assist the poor milkmaid with her broken buckets.

"Not much can be done about the milk," he tells her apologetically, helping her gather the splintered wood.

"No," she agrees, their feet already churning the pale milk into the mud, making a frothy sludge.

"Escort me home? I'm staying at the inn," she tells him eagerly, her secret deception already forgotten along with the milkmaid's face.

A man's smile was the same as it had ever been.

"I might ask what a man is doing so far north," she said.

"And a man holds his secrets very closely, as a girl must know."

"I'm not a girl," she told him plainly. His only answer was a smile.

The inn was old, crumbling and ill-used. The innkeeper did not recognize the elderly couple asking for a room, but she did notice the mud caking their shoes and thought drearily of the mess they would surely make. She accepted their coin all the same and did not think it odd that they retired to their room immediately, as dusk was falling and with it, the cold crept in.

A man and a woman lit their own fire to warm their meager room. A woman easily shed her wrinkly, ancient face and allowed herself to remember what she had long forgotten. She stood before him with long, skinny limbs, lank brown hair and grey eyes in a thin, pale face. Out in the closing darkness, a wolf was howling. The sound seemed to come to her from a long way away but it filled her up like wine and hummed under her skin. It felt good to remember.

"A man has a weariness," he said, crossing over to the bed. He has also shed his old man's face, and she didn't recognize the one he wore now but it hardly mattered. He could look like anything and she would know him.

"A weariness? Surely you don't plan on sleeping tonight," she remarked, not brothering to be coy.

"No? Then come here."

She didn't even hesitate. Her dress was dirty and caked in drying mud and too big for her lean frame. It fell off her shoulder as she slid into bed next to him, revealing the sharp bone of her clavicle. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that it would come to this, his mouth seeking her neck, his hand curling over her ribs. The lone wolf howling in the distance was joined by others as the night deepened.

They don't have to speak in words, not anymore. She had been a little girl the last time they had spoken and he had given her a coin and phrase that had saved her life. Now she was no girl and it was easy to shrug off the overlarge dress and taste his mouth, discover his body for the first time. He was lean and fit, built with hard muscle and wiry strength.

She allowed sensation to engulf her. It was the sound of wood cracking as it burned and the sweet, smoky smell it released in the small room. It was the night, the forbidding winds over the endless marshes of The Neck, stretching for miles to the snow dappled woods of The North, where the wolves roamed and howled. She felt their presence in her bones, their silent footfalls cushioned by snow and their heads thrown back as they howled.

A man had rough, calloused hands that touched every part of her. They traced her ribs, the small bumps of her breasts and stiff, aching nipples. They found the hollow of her throat, the shell of her ear, the nape of her neck. He followed every touch with his warm, gentle mouth.

It left her panting and wanton, desperate for more. Her own hands were not strangers to the male body and she was keen to touch him too. The wiry hairs on his chest, the wind-toughened skin of his shoulders, the freckled brow. She tickled the hair around his navel, making him gasp and traced the hard line of his hip, the muscle that plunged toward his groin in a pleasing V.

His cock was hard against her stomach when he dipped his fingers between her legs to find her wet and wanting. She hummed against his skin, pressing her fingernails into his shoulders as he thumbed her clit. Not wanting to wait another moment, she grasped his prick and guided it inside her.

A woman had had many lovers and felt many hands but she found these familiar hands were far more desirable. It inspired the same feeling as the wolf's voice had in her heart and she arched up against him, wanting to be as close as she possibly could, wanting to be inside him like he was inside of her.

His hands were actually trembling as he gripped her waist. He pushed his fingers between them to find her clit again, to rub it as he sunk inside her cunt again and again. She spread her thighs wide, wanting more, digging her heels into the small of his back, pressing her breasts toward his mouth.

The sound of wolves was loud in her ears. It sounded like a song she had heard when she was very small to which she could no longer remember the words, but the meaning was as bright and clear as ever. It made her remember and as she remembered she lost herself. Her climax was piercing, a dagger of pleasure deep in her heart. It burned through her entire body, curling her toes and ripping a wordless cry from her throat, a howl of fierce joy that tore into the night to join the sound of wolves which stalked the shadows.

Even the aftermath was sweet. The fire had burned nearly to nothing, but they had the smoldering heat of their bodies to cling to. A woman felt bone tired, but in the way one feels when they've accomplished something magical. Magic had always felt to be a long distance from her, even when she was changing her face. It wasn't distant now.

A man's breathing was deep and even as a woman lay across his chest, inhaling his earthy scent and reveling in the heat his body still gave off. It was sweet and familiar sounds that sent her off to sleep at last, and she dreamed of wolves that night, in a way she hadn't in too many years.

A woman might have half a hundred reasons to changer her face, but she only needs one to change it back.


End file.
